“Please.” Her voice caught, and she hated that sign of weakness. She’d spent so much time learning to disguise her weaknesses.
But Steven Rollins seemed to soften at her tone. “I live on a ranch. Around Claxton.”
“Not that far.”
“No.”
A tiny hope filled Jackie’s soul. “I understand why you want me to sign, Mr. Rollins. I would do the same.” To have to share a loved one could be horrible and very difficult. “I don’t expect you to share your daughter with a stranger, especially one who didn’t even know of her existence before today.”
The man relaxed even more. A small smile turned his face heartbreakingly handsome, making Jackie’s breathing kick up a notch. No doubt he’d had a beautiful wife.
“Thank you, Ms. Hammond. You’ll sign then?” He held out his hand, a conciliatory gesture.
“Yes, but I have a condition.”
Immediately his hand stilled. He pulled back. “What kind of a condition?”
“I want to meet her.”
“What do you mean, you want to meet her?”
His tone was thunderous. Jackie should have been shaking in her shoes. Under other circumstances, she would have been, but for some reason she wasn’t as scared of Steven Rollins as she should have been. Maybe because he seemed to genuinely care for his daughter.
And the truth was that she wasn’t completely sure what she had meant by her words. She just knew that she did mean them. She had given up one child, and it had been much more difficult than she could ever have believed possible. Never once had she gotten to hold that baby as if it were her own. But fate and happenstance had combined to give her one more chance.
Jackie wanted that chance desperately.
“I meant what I said, Mr. Rollins. You just told me that your daughter was conceived from eggs that came from my body. There’s a part of me in her. That’s something I don’t take lightly. I’m not asking to be a lasting part of her life, you understand. I know there’s no possibility of that, but I…I just can’t sign a paper and never once have a glimpse of her. I want the chance to see her.”
“Impossible. You can’t do it.”
Oh, she had heard those words so many times in her life. And she had often believed them.
But this time a child was involved.
“I can do it, Mr. Rollins.”
He studied her carefully, slowly, maddeningly. Jackie almost held her breath as his gaze drifted over her, as if looking for flaws, missing nothing. She felt suddenly awkward and naked in her boxy gray suit. In that moment he was a man looking over a woman. And she was a woman reacting in the most physical way, her body and skin prickling with heightened awareness, Jackie was horrified to realize. No doubt the man was merely trying to intimidate her. And so, with great difficulty, she managed to sidestep her body’s reaction.
“We’ll see about your demands,” he finally said. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Jackie was pretty sure that he was going to come back armed with plenty of legal advice. And he would look her over again.
The legal advice didn’t scare her…too much. The look—she didn’t want to think about that look—was too intimate.
“I’ll let you know my terms then,” she agreed. “I’ll have them in writing.”
He gave her a curt nod. She almost missed the look that lurked in the back of his eyes, but just before he turned, she saw it. Fear?
She held out her hand to his retreating back. She should just leave it alone.
“Mr. Rollins?”
He turned on one heel.
“I’m assuming it will take a certain amount of money to make you go away,” he told her with an unmistakable trace of derision.
Slowly she shook her head. “I’m not interested in money. And I don’t mean to be difficult, but I can’t just leave this alone. We’re talking about a child. A baby.”
“I know,” he said. His voice was tight, the emotion leashed, but not completely.
That got to her—the fact that he was trying to hide how badly he cared about his child, but couldn’t. The fact that he could affect her that way made him dangerous.
She wished she never had to see him again.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.
Chapter Two
“Damn woman,” Steven bit off the words as he pulled off his boots and dropped them on the opulent cream-colored carpeting of the room he had booked at La Torchére. What was her game? Why was she pushing this issue when she had only just discovered Suzy’s existence?
And how come she had to be so…so…
“Fascinating.” He reluctantly admitted what he had refused to allow himself to think thus far. Jacqueline Hammond was no beauty by a long shot. In truth, she was rather plain, but she had a pair of fine blue eyes and pretty pink lips that trembled ever so slightly at moments of high emotion. In another lifetime, had he been another man, he would have wanted to pursue her and take a good long taste of those lips. As it was…
“I want her out of my life completely. To hell with those vulnerable blue eyes.” He pounded out the words. He meant them, too. It was going to be hard raising Suzy alone, especially once she reached an age when she needed the kinds of things that a woman could best provide. But he was through with relationships and especially with marriage and dreams. Too many of his dreams had been wrenched away from him.
All he wanted right now was to get himself out of this tangled mess with Jacqueline Hammond and get back to his daughter and his ranch. Then everything would be fine.
He had thought this would be easy. He had assumed Jacqueline Hammond was most likely a woman who had once done a good deed but wasn’t interested in children herself.
But that look in her eyes when she’d said the word baby…
“Dammit all!” How could he have thought anything would be easy with a woman like that?
What he needed right now was to stop thinking about how she had looked and start thinking about how to get her to sign away any rights she had to him and his child.
He picked up the phone and began to dial.
The next morning, Jackie entered the forest-green, cream and golden oak lobby of La Torchére with both dread and anticipation. She had gone upstairs last night still reeling from the shock of the news that she had helped produce a child, and still shaking from her encounter with Steven Rollins. She had had few close relationships with men over the years, and had never had a good one. She no longer even wanted to try, so coming into close contact with a man who sent her senses spinning out of control and who, of all men, had reason to dislike her, was more than disconcerting.
She really didn’t want to see him again. But there was no way she was giving up this opportunity.
Jackie wondered what Steven Rollins would think of the simple plan she had formulated in the wee hours of the night as she lay tossing and turning.
Whatever he thought, it wouldn’t be something positive. Ducking into a deserted alcove, she pulled out a small mirror from her purse to make sure she looked composed. She did. Her dark hair was in place, her eyes gave nothing away.
A changeling child, her blond gorgeous mother had once called Jackie with disgust. Plain, nondescript, unnoticeable, her looks had simply emphasized how she had never fit in. But today she hoped that her unremarkable, restrained exterior would stand her in good stead. She needed to